Part 8 (2/2)
Of what sort are these philosophers? Are they, as they claim to be, the cream of mankind, those who have the pure reason? Are they such as the world admires? I think not. For pure reason does not appeal to mankind.
It is too cold, too hard, too arid. It is barren and produces nothing.
What has philosophy given the world but unending words? It is the denial of emotion, and emotion is life. It is the reduction of living to the formula of mathematics--a grey world. Those who, rejecting religion, rely on pure reason, are those who have lost the stronger emotions, who have heads but no hearts, while the enthusiasts have hearts but no heads. And in between these lie the great ma.s.s of men who are religious but not fanatics, who reason but who do not look to reason to prove their religion, the men and women who live large lives, and are lost neither in the tumult of unrestrained emotion, nor bound in the iron limits of a mental syllogism.
”Do you infer,” it will be asked, ”that religion is in inverse ratio to reason? But it is not so. Many men, most men of the highest intellectual attainments, have been deeply religious, great soldiers, sailors, statesmen, discoverers; the great men are on our side, the thinkers have been with us.” I am not sure of that. The great _doers_ have always been religious, the great thinkers rarely so. No man has ever, I think, sat down calmly unbia.s.sed to reason out his religion and not ended by rejecting it. The great men who have also been religious do not invalidate what I say. Newton was a great thinker, perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He could follow natural laws and occurrences with the keenest eye for flaws, for mistakes, for rash a.s.sumption. He could never accept until he had proved. But did he ever apply this ac.u.men to religion? Not so; he accepted at once the chronology of the Old Testament unhesitatingly, blindly, and worked out a chronology of the Fall much as did Archbishop Usher.
Indeed, I think it is always so. There is no a.s.sumption more fallacious than that because a man is a keen reasoner on one subject he is also on another, that because one thing is fair ground for controversy other things are so also. Men who are really religious, who believe in their faith whatever that faith may be, consider it above proof, beyond argument. It is strange at first, it is to later thoughts one of the most illuminating things, to hear a keen reasoner who is also a religious man talk, to note the change of mental att.i.tude as the subject changes. In ordinary matters everything is subject to challenge, to discussion, to rules of logic. But when it is religion that comes up, note the dropped voice, the softened face, the gentle light in the eye.
It is emotion now, not reason; feeling, not induction. It is a subject few religious men care to discuss at all, because they know it is not a matter of pure reason. True religion, therefore, that beautiful restrained emotion which all who have it treasure, which those who have not envy and hate, lives among the men who are between these extremes.
Those who with strong emotions have but narrow outlets for it become unduly religious, narrow sectarians.
Those with uncontrolled religious emotions become fanatics, those with none but brute emotions remain brutes. Those whom the cult of sensual desires has overcome follow Horace and Omar Khayyam. Those in whom reason has overpowered and killed the emotions become those most arid of people, philosophers. True and beautiful faith is to be found only amongst those who lie between all these extremes. They have many and keen emotions, but they find many outlets for them all, so that the stream of feeling is not directed into one narrow channel. And they employ reason not as a murdering dissecting power, but as an equaliser and balancer of the living. Reason is not concerned with what religion is, but only with the relative position religious emotions shall occupy in life. Too little lets it run wild, too much kills it.
But religion is never reason. It is a cult of certain of the emotions.
What these emotions are I hope to explain further on.
CHAPTER XV.
ENTHUSIASM.
Such are the qualities and such the circ.u.mstances that increase and nourish religious feeling, of such are the more religious of all peoples. What is the result in their lives? Does their religion cause them to live more worthy lives? Are the more deeply religious those whom the world at large most deeply respects? What is the effect of their religion in their lives?
I am not speaking here of professors of religion, of priests or monks, of fakirs or yogis, of any whose lives are directly devoted to the practice of the teaching of religion. They are a cla.s.s apart, and are judged by standards other than ordinary men. Their world is another than that of ordinary folk. I speak now of the religion of those who still live the lives of ordinary people. What effect has religion upon them, and how are they ordinarily regarded in the world?
It is strange that if indeed religion be the truth of truths it should be regarded with such impatience, with such suspicion, if brought into ordinary life. For so it is. Every cla.s.s has its own rules, its own conventions; every profession, every teacher, every form of society has its own rules, which are not founded at all upon religion. In every walk of life it is a.s.sumed that, subject to the special etiquette of that trade or profession and to the observance of what is considered honourable conduct therein, every man's actions are governed by self-interest alone. If a man allege any reasons but this he is regarded with doubt and suspicion. He is avoided. I will give an instance in point. There was a doctor once whom I knew who practised a certain ”cure” for disease--it is quite immaterial what the system was; it was especially good for tropical diseases--and as some of us were conversing with him on the subject, and recalling with grat.i.tude and pleasure the benefit we had derived, it was suggested to him that he might do well in India. ”If in a hill station,” we said, ”you were to establish yourself and practise your treatment, you would have a large clientele. Many Englishmen who could not afford the time to come home would come to you, and there would be natives also. Such treatment as yours would hurt no one's caste. No doubt you would do well, you would make a name and be rich.” This was his answer: ”I would not care about that if I could only do those poor natives some good.” It was sincerely uttered, I doubt not.
There was no conscious cant, but it fell upon his hearers as a chill.
The conversation dropped, it changed, and gradually we went away. The remark pained. Why? It is always so. Trade is trade and professions are professions, but religion is apart. It is not to be intruded into daily life; it is to be kept sedulously away. Not because its introduction suggests something higher and shames or discountenances the observances of life. The feeling is the very reverse. We suspect it. It does not suggest a higher code of morality at all. No man of experience but would instinctively avoid doing business with anyone who brought his religious motives into daily intercourse. Let a man be as honourable, as scrupulous, as high-minded as he can. We honour him for it. But religious! No. To say that we suspect the speaker of cant is not always correct. It may in cases be so, but not always, not generally. It is not the reason of the instinctive withdrawal. To say that religious feeling is a handicap in the struggle for life is also incorrect. It is not a handicap at all. Let a man be as religious as he likes provided he tempers it with common sense and keeps the expression of it for home consumption. To say that a man is highly religious in his private life is praise, and creates confidence. To say that a man intrudes religious principles into his business or profession or daily intercourse is enough to make men shun him at once. He becomes an impossible person.
This is a strange commentary on the theory of religion, that what is supposed to elevate life is, when introduced into everyday affairs, almost always a sign of incompetence or fraud. Yet it may be so. Some years ago all Britain was alarmed by a terrible bank failure. It was colossal, the biggest perhaps that has ever occurred. There were no a.s.sets, and there were liabilities of over ten million pounds. The shares were unlimited, and the shareholders liable for all this great sum of money made away with by dishonesty and crime.
It brought ruin, absolutely blank ruin, to many thousands of people.
The directors of this bank were known in the city as religious men. They were kirk elders, Sunday school teachers, preachers--I know not what.
They were steeped in religion and iniquity to the lips. They were tried, and some went to penal servitude.
There was again some years later another terrible failure. It was a building society and its allied concerns. And again the chief managers were known as intensely religious men. They too, were prominent members of the religious community to which they belonged; they gave freely to charity; they held, it was stated, prayer meetings before each consultation of the Board. They were steeped in lying and fraud also.
And again quite recently a solicitor absconded with great sums of trust money. The same story. It has been the same story over and over and over again.
The writer can remember being concerned in the trial of a similar case in the East.
It is useless to a.s.sert that all these men were hypocrites, that they shammed religion, that they used it as a bait to catch the unwary. It may be true in one case or two, but not in the majority. It is useless to a.s.sert that their a.s.sumption of religion was false. Who discovered it to be false until the catastrophe? No one. They lived among religious men, their lives were to a great extent open. Was there any doubt about the truth of their religion then? No one has suggested such a thing.
These men were religious from boys, they lived among religious people all their lives. They were honoured and respected for that religion. No man could sham such a thing. It is easy to talk of deceit; but a life of such deceit, such sham is impossible. It is quite absolutely impossible.
That the religion of these men was and is as good and as real as that of other men it is impossible to doubt. Criminals are often very religious.
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